William Penhallow Henderson

William Penhallow Henderson (1877 - 1943)

While in high school, William Penhallow Henderson studied art, civil engineering and comparative religion, interests that would remain with him for the rest of his life. He continued his education at the Boston Museum School, then headed by the well-respected American Impressionist painter, Edmund C. Tarbell. Tarbell trained Henderson in the mechanical aspests of academic painting, instilling in his pupil the technical principals of the European masters. Henderson received several scholarships as an accomplished art student, most importantly the Paige Traveling Scholarship, which allowed him to study in Europe. Upon his return to America in 1904, Henderson accepted a teaching position at the newly formed Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. However, in 1916, his wife Alice Corbin, was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because of Henderson's predisposed affininty for the Southwest, the couple moved to Santa Fe to seek treatment at the Sunmount Sanitorium. Reviews of Henderson's first exhibit of his views of New Mexico stated that the artist had "found something new in that historic land" and that he had "caught the spirit and air of the place more than the other artists."